The old man twinkled. “You’ve always been earnest, Russ. But from the champing-at-the-bit look on your face, I doubt you’ve learned the limitations of your power yet. You’re in the most frustrating of professions-they’ll give you a tough job to do, and then they’ll prevent you from doing it. Why? Because the private interests have strong lobbies, and the public doesn’t. If you don’t move fast enough, you’re accused of lying down on the job, and if you do, you’re accused of ruining the whole financial barrel just to get at a couple of rotten apples. How can you win? The best you can do is avoid losing.” The smile was more pained than ever.
Hastings said, “Maybe that’s enough. That’s the world we live in. Nobody tries to win wars anymore, either. You just try to keep from losing them.”
“You’re incorrigible,” Saul Cohen snapped. “All right, then, you’ve got something on your mind. You came to Delphi to consult the oracle, and the oracle has monopolized the conversation. I apologize. What can I do for you?”
Hastings shifted his seat and examined a fingernail; he said, “I believe in intuition, Saul, I always have. And my intuition tells me there’s something stirring in Northeast Consolidated.”
An eyebrow went up; the old man didn’t smile. “Elliot Judd’s organization. Is that why you’re interested?”
“That may be why it attracted my attention.”
“What sort of hints have you found?”
“It’s hard to pin down. There’s a bit of activity, people buying the stock, quite a few Canadian orders and Swiss numbered accounts.”
“But nothing’s happened visibly, has it? I’ve watched the stock-I don’t recall seeing anything queer.”
Hastings said, “If anybody’s maneuvering in the dark, he’s being discreet. But there are dummies buying into it. I want to find out what they’re after and who they’re fronting for.”
The old man rearranged the wrinkles of his face into an agony of thoughtfulness. “I’m not sure I can help. Of course, the market for NCI is so broad, anybody could put half a million dollars into the stock without forcing it-they’re trading twenty, thirty thousand shares a day. So unless there’s a massive manipulation, you won’t see it reflected in the price. And anything less than massive would not be to anyone’s advantage.”
“I thought you might be able to tell me what I ought to be looking for.”
“To know what to look for, you must first know why you’re looking. What do you suspect?”
“Nothing-everything. I don’t know.”
“Do you have any reason to believe someone might challenge Elliot Judd for control? One of the large stockholders, perhaps? Someone who thinks Judd isn’t running the company as well as it should be run? Any indications of a proxy war shaping up?”
“Nothing like that.”
“Have you asked Elliot Judd?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you?”
Hastings said, “I don’t think I ought to upset him unless I’ve got something concrete to show him.”
“It could be a fight for control from inside, you know. If one of the top men in the company wanted to take it over, he might use dummies to buy stock for him, to avoid alerting Judd. Or it might be an outsider.”
“A raider.”
“He’d have to be big. Very big. A Howard Hughes would have trouble buying control of NCI.”
“There are other ways to get control of a company. You don’t have to buy it.”
“Hard to do, with a strong company,” the old man said. “Has it occurred to you there may be dummies buying the stock on behalf of an insider who knows something exciting is going to happen within the company-something that will raise the price of the stock? A new contract, perhaps? An oil discovery?”
“NCI doesn’t deal in oil very much. And as far as I know, they’re not getting ready to announce any big news. That’s what intrigues me. Somebody has a reason to buy big chunks of the stock through front men, and all the reasons I can think of are the ones we’ve just ruled out.”
“Then either one of your assumptions is wrong, or you’ve missed something.”
“Sure,” Hastings said. “I was hoping you’d spot it for me.”
“I’m sorry, my boy. I’m only a broker, not an oracle, after all.” Saul Cohen began to smile; his telephone rang.
Hastings stood up. “I don’t want to kill the rest of your morning,” he said. “The market’s about to open. I’ll see you soon.”
“Take care,” the old man said, flapping a hand at him and reaching for the phone. When Hastings left the office he could hear Saul’s magpie voice chattering gloomily into the telephone.
11. Diane Hastings
When Mason Villiers lifted his lighter to Diane’s cigarette, she drew the smoke slowly into her mouth and kept a rigid, nervous smile on her face: Villiers’ stare unsettled her.
He kept watching her over cognac and demitasse, looking relaxed and at ease, sated after the fine meal. The headwaiter came by, gliding like a cobra; he had greeted Villiers by name and given them a choice table and since then had fawned over them effusively. Diane brought her attention back from that distraction and found Villiers’ eyes on her, his guarded smile repellent and fascinating at once. His magnetism was uncanny. She found it masculine, erotic-and frightening.
He was turning his cigar slowly in the flame of his lighter; his slate eyes studied her, and when he clicked the lighter shut he said, “You’ve had time to think it over. What do you say?”
“I haven’t decided. It’s short notice-I’m honestly not sure. Not yet.”
“It’s the sensible thing for you to do. All the new stock issues are drawing investors like flies. Last week nine companies went public, and seven of them closed Friday at premiums more than a point above the offering price. One of them shot up seven dollars. If you go public and price your shares at ten dollars, they’ll probably be selling for fifteen before you know it.”
“It sounds attractive,” she said. “I admit that. But I can’t help wondering what your angle is.”
His smile seemed genuinely amused. “Does everybody have to have six fingers, Diane?”
“I can hardly ignore your reputation, can I?”
“I know you don’t approve of me-is it bad form to notice? But you’d be smart not to judge a case by its advocate.”
“Really?”
“I’ve told you what I stand to gain by it. I’ll go over it again, if it will help. I undertake to write the Nuart tickets, take care of preparing your prospectus, arranging to have the issue underwritten, all those details. In return I get an option on a specified number of your shares at the offering price, exercisable for three months, and I’ll also want use of a portion of your capitalization to trade into other companies. Look, I’ve developed a Jesse James reputation, and it’s hard for me to make trades in my own name-nobody wants to sell to me. I need companies to front for me. I’m being honest about this, you see. But you’ve got to understand the contracts will be drawn up so that you’ll have absolute control of Nuart at all times. You’ll have your own lawyers go over every step of it and make sure it’s set up in such a way that I can’t possibly get control away from you. You’ll retain an absolute majority of voting stock in your possession.”
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“I should-I’ve argued with enough of them. But I’m trying to lay it out without legalese double-talk. Your lawyers will examine everything. If they find anything at all to object to, you can withdraw anytime without losses. I’ll even pay the legal fees. You want to know what I’m getting out of it? Easy. I can raise capital to buy into any company, but it can be messy and costly-a lot of money gets eaten up in taxes. But if I buy in through a corporation-through Nuart-then the picture changes completely. When one company buys another, it can be reported as a pooling of interests. A merger. The buyer’s assets don’t have to reflect the cost of purchase, which would reduce his reportable profits, and he doesn’t have to pay any tax on the exchange of stock-Does this bore you?”